Woman World: Now Both Sweet, Realizable Fantasy & Graphic Novel

In the skewed, pea-sized mind of the misogynist, feminism can only mean one thing: the full-fledged radical desire to expunge all men from the earth. In Aminder Dhaliwal’s latest project, a graphic novel called Woman World, this isn’t something they even need to try at as the gradual weaning out of the Y chromosome has taken care of matters all on its own. The jig is expected to be up in about four thousand years for men if the rate of Y chromosome degeneration continues as it is. That being said, the premise of Dhaliwal’s novel is more like realizable prognosis than sweet fantasy. In many respects, it’s something of a flip side to Children of Men (the only fantasy that really needs to happen for the planet to stop being so fucking annoying).

And in this regard, there are generations of women who have no idea what it’s like to live in a world with men (just as generations of people had no idea what it was like to live with the piercing sound of crying, excreting babies in Children of Men). As Dhaliwal explains that she was deliberate in her intent not to come across as man-bashing for the sensitive population of people still claiming to have penises, “Our relationship with men would be kind of like our relationship with dinosaurs, where we have this strange love of them, and we forget the dark side.” This comparison to dinosaurs is a salient one, for that’s exactly what men are in the present in terms of their enduring archaic viewpoints (mainly the ones that are somehow in charge of entire countries, e.g. Putin, Trump).

Tasked with building their own communities, women take the reins as carpenters, blacksmiths, artists and people with the ability to do pull-ups. As for the question of “What will straight women do?” The simple answer is: “How many of you skewed bi anyway?” Alas, if only that reply were the simple case for women still imprisoned by dick.

As the women grapple with what to call this society sans sausage, several ideas are bandied, from Dame District to Female Federation to Matriarch Macrocosm. But it is ultimately Woman World that rings the truest. And as the younger generation is taught about the lore of the past (looking to Paul Blart: Mall Cop as one of the only remaining relics of what a man was supposed to be/look like), it becomes all the more apparent just how insanely warped the world was with men in existence/control. One scene in particular demarcates the gradual leading up to the extinction of men with, “The world spiraled into chaos. There were riots, the market crashed, war declared. But when it came to a woman’s body, the world had opinions. Suddenly everybody was listening. The last men came out in droves.” And oh my, have they–as the old guard dinosaurs that simply won’t let go of life and surrender to death have seen fit to turn the political landscape firmly toward the far right.

Indeed, the entire premise of the graphic novel came from an exchange (in text, naturally) between Dhaliwal and her friends around the time of the now historic Women’s March, in which she suggested, “When the men go extinct, it would be like women learning to talk again because they’re not being interrupted.” That it would be. Will be.

So no, maybe it isn’t the brutally executed utopia Valerie Solanas charted out with The S.C.U.M Manifesto, but maybe it doesn’t need to be. The absence of men, after all, would be a peaceful pursuit and result with women at the helm. A waiting game, really. Sadly, one still doesn’t seem to see a place for trans people in this society either.